Energy

If you Google "nuclear power + global warming" you will quickly see that nuclear, by some accounts, is the "quick fix" in the fight against global warming. In America, we are always looking for the "quick fix" and in this case many are looking towards nuclear as the miracle drug to our addiction to our overly consumptive lives. When faced with a choice to pop a pill or run the extra mile to lose that extra pound, many of us would choose the pill.

But like any quick fix, this one has side effects. Whether it's the pill that guarantees stronger bones or a mor- active sex life, we are all familiar with the "vomiting, irregular heartbeat and in some cases death may occur" tagline. In the case of nuclear power we have the same scenario. In the same breath that many tout nuclear as the zero-emission answer to our energy troubles, they quickly gloss over or fail to mention the glaring and, yes, potentially deadly side effects.

Side effect #1: Waste. A large nuclear reactor produces 3 cubic meters (25-30 tons) of spent fuel each year, 3% of which is made of fission products. Spent nuclear fuel needs 10,000 years of radioactive decay in order to no longer pose a threat to public health and safety. The U.S. and other countries have yet to implement final disposition of spent fuel or high level radioactive waste streams created at various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Crude oil hit $110 today and it was an ironic farewell to Milton Copulos, late of the National Defense Council Foundation, who led a campaign to promote the "true" costs of gasoline over the past few years. I spoke with Milt in January and he gave me his latest estimate: We pay an extra $10.07 for every gallon we buy.

First, let me say that I never quite knew whether to trust his numbers -- after all, there really aren't any good numbers for the externalities of gas. But I found his background -- in defense,  the Heritage Foundation, and then alternative fuels -- intriguing, provocative and a good starting place for trying to figure out how much a gallon of gas really costs us. (Milt also offered a heck of an interview, ranging through housing stock in China to military plans to turn garbage into fuel, to his children, his wife, with time for a short primer on flash pyrolosis.)

Here's how he broke it the cost of of a gallon of gas:

Climate change will emerge as one of America's most difficult--and transforming--strategic issues, regardless of who swears to protect and defend the Constitution next January. For presidential candidate John McCain, that reality and his record championing the environment are running into his courting of conservatives. Terry Tamminen, head of New America Foundation's Climate Policy Program, says that McCain's attempts to paint cap-and-trade as the conservative approach to climate change may leave no one satisfied, in the latest issue of The New Republic.

Daniel Day Lewis just won an Oscar for his performance the embodiment of greed in There Will Be Blood. His character, Daniel Plainview, is a ruthless, scheming, tooth sucking, over-the-top wanna-be oil tycoon who kills to turn the dry hills of California into his personal bank account. He is exactly the kind of greedy oil baron Americans have loved to hate since John D. Rockefeller first landed in the Pennsylvania oil fields in the 1860’s. Everyone who sees the movie leaves the theatre convinced that what'’s wrong with us is greed, and oil is a metaphor for that.

I loved this movie (particularly the way it shows crude oil rocketing out of the ground) but I don’t think greed is the problem— -- it’'s the answer.

American voters and politicians buy into the greed and oil myth, but with a twist: We'’re happiest when we’re condemning the greed and taking the oil. Everyone from Pelosi to Huckabee has trotted out the “"G-word"” when discussing high gas prices. (In 2006, Bush coyly referred to “illegal manipulation or cheating.) But I think the tycoon story is pretty much dead. If we’'re going to deal with the current problems of oil— -- high prices, smog, greenhouse gases, geopolitical problems, traffic jams -- we’re going to need to ditch the oil and embrace the greed.

Oil went to $100 this morning, although apparently only one actual trade happened at that price. Likewise, the supposed boogeyman of $100 oil turns out to be a bit anticlimactic.

Remember those "try your strength" games at the carnival where you swung a hammer as hard as you could to ring a bell? I never got past the "wimp" or "pipsqueak" rating no matter how hard I swung, but the bell always beckoned at the very top of the scale.

Today, we are very close to that bell : $102.81 (in current dollars) is the highest price paid for oil, in 1980, after the Iranian Revolution. We could potentially ring the bell tomorrow, and then what? For the past several years analysts have been expecting that high prices would give way to lower prices by increasing supply and encouraging conservation but the price of oil has risen from $10 in 1997 to around $25 in 2002 to $100 now while demand continues to dog supply.

So my guess is that once we ring the bell, we'll just keep raising that bell, to $105, $110, until we actually feel pain and start conserving. And that eventual number could be a lot scarier than $100 oil. If you measure oil price by a more experiential Richter-type measure, you know that the price of oil doesn't feel as bad as it did in 1980, and that feeling is actually somewhat accurate. CAFE standards have made vehicles more efficient so that gas costs are a smaller part of middle class incomes than in the 1970's--which means they don't hurt as much as they used to.